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Friday, November 11, 2011

Perfect Imperfections

Every loving parent is aware of the priceless value of perfect imperfections.  Refrigerator doors in many homes are decorated with childhood drawings of trees, people, houses, and other images drawn perfectly—not in the sense that they can compete in a literal sense with the exact representation presented by a camera photo, but that they represent the imagination and love of the households’ growing children.  I got on this train of thought because today Kathy decorated our house for the Christmas season.  The little green reusable Christmas tree she put up, she pointed out, did not stand up perfectly straight.  This brought back memories of the Christmas trees we had in Ellenton when I was a child.  For several years it was my good fortune to acquire the tree for our living room.  “Tree” in this case should be used loosely.  One year I cut several branches from a nearby Australian pine, and somehow arranged them in the shape of a tree in the Christmas tree stand.  Another year dad and I went down a country road eyeing growth near the ditch.  There was a bush (not a pine) growing that looked promising.  It was dark green, and about 3 or 4 feet tall.  I climbed the far side of the ditch and cut it down.  We had our Christmas tree.  These “trees” of course were no match for well-formed, regal pines.  I suppose, looking back, that my parents saw these as perfect trees in part because their son had fetched them.  I only know that I felt that I was making a real contribution to our Christmas celebration.  This stands as a lesson for me: lack of vision and love can sometimes mistakenly lead us not to see perfection in the imperfect.  What impact would it have had on me, I wonder, if my parents had ridiculed and rejected my gifts of trees—if they had preferred the conventional tree at whatever the relational cost?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

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